A Kiss For Kyra

How can you have so much love for someone you just met?

My daughter, Kyra Jane, finally made her entrance into the world today. I love her so much, I could just die.

Everyone tried to tell me what to expect. But they could never have prepared me for a day like today.

When you're carrying your first child, all kinds of well-meaning people go out of their way to tell you that you can't possibly imagine the depth of love that will flow through your body when you finally hold your newborn in your arms for the first time.

"It's like nothing you've ever felt before."

"You'll be taken over by feelings and emotions you didn't even know existed."

"You immediately become a completely different person when you finally lay your eyes on your child."

"Your world shifts. You are no longer the center of your own universe. She becomes your epicenter and you revolve around her. Everything you will ever do from this moment on will be about her. For her. Because of her."

That last one put a bit of a scare into me. It's almost funny to think that my biggest worry in the world was that I'd lose my own identity. That having a child somehow meant that I'd no longer be an individual. That I would just be "Kyra's mom."

What a folly that was. As if I ever want to be anything but that for the rest of my life.

It's all I have ever wanted to be. A mother. And I had tried for so many years, but every single attempt was unsuccessful and utterly heartbreaking. After so many revolutions of hopefulness and eagerness turning into devastating disappointment, I could take no more. Eventually, I stopped trying altogether.

And then it happened.

When I had all but given up after multiple failures, there on the test strip were two solid-blue lines -- strong, distinct, and absolutely undeniable.

Isn't that always the way? Couples who give up trying to conceive naturally become convinced that their bodies are wired incorrectly. Or that they're simply not up to the task to produce or sustain life. So, some of them turn to other paths of parenthood, like adoption. They open their hearts and homes to someone else's forfeited child then, BAM, out of the blue, they end up pregnant.

Bodies are weird like that. It's like they play this chaotic game, coming at you from all sides when you least expect it, stirring up emotions, expectations, and disappointments just for the sport of it.

Bodies can suck sometimes. But they can also be extraordinary things that create miracles. The stuff of dreams and desires. Of hopes for the future. Of life. And of death.

You can read all the books, talk to the doctors, get advice from all the other mothers. But when it finally happens to you, well, you can toss your "perfectly laid plan" right out the window. Creating life is a whole new ballgame, one without hard-and-fast rules, that's different for every woman. And, you kind of just have to roll with it and be prepared for anything.

But you can never be prepared for everything. Some things you just never see coming.

This fantastic metamorphosis that completely reshapes you from the inside out also curiously and simultaneously reconfigures your mind. The emotional rollercoaster begins well before the baby is ever born. During pregnancy, your brain starts firing long-dormant, ancient synapses that cause your feelings to go completely haywire. As does your ability to control them. You might as well not even try.

For someone like me who has always ached to have a child of my own, the worst part of it all was the endless waiting. It was agonizingly slow. Almost unbearable. Then again, I've never been the most patient person in the world.

In the meantime, I began to play my own game. I started picturing what the future would look like when Kyra arrived. And I had big, big dreams for my little one.

Month after month, as I watched the exterior of my body evolve, my imagination spiraled with thoughts of the amazing transformations occurring on the inside.

Cells had already furiously set out to craft my child, dividing and multiplying, arranging themselves into a complex set of patterns to build a beating heart and expanding, contracting lungs and a wrinkly brain.

My mind painted fantastic pictures for me of that translucent, shapeless sack of organs stretching and pulling itself into contours that resembled limbs and digits that would be filled with soft bones wrapped in muscles and laced together with veins, arteries, and tendons.

After that would come the really good stuff. The formation of a forehead and brow bones and padded cheekbones perched above sightless eyes fringed with wispy lashes. All of this situated just above a tiny nose bump molded seamlessly into the cupid's bow of a pair of pale, pink lips that would eventually find thumbs to suckle. And which, at the appointed time, would part to allow a rapturous cry to break forth, announcing my precious cargo's long-awaited entrance into the world.

God made all of creation in six days. My body seemed determined to take forever to create one child, then decided to tack on another 36 hours of grueling labor. I was beginning to think she would never arrive at all.

After what seemed like an eternity -- which, as it turns out, wasn't nearly enough time, after all -- Kyra finally made her quiet appearance into the world, almost like a hushed whisper.

The nurses washed her carefully and wrapped her small body in warm blankets. Then, with the greatest of care, they laid her gently into my eager, outstretched arms.

I know it's cliche, but there has never been a more beautiful child in all of existence than the one my husband and I made together. She was absolute perfection personified. And I was her mother, at last.

Cradling my sweet Kyra close, I leaned in to smell the unique perfume of her newborn skin. I had always heard about the "baby smell," but I never knew it would be so intoxicating. I made a mental note to catalogue her sweet scent, which was a combination of soap, milk, and fresh bread. I wanted to remember this moment for the rest of my life.

Gingerly unraveling the blanket, I raised her plump leg and gently removed the sock covering her tiny foot. I rubbed her nubby toes gently between my fingers and closed my eyes, remembering the feel of her frequent kicks and insistent pushes from inside me, her fervent attempts to stretch my womb to make more room for her growing body.

On those particularly active days, I caressed my protruding belly and visualized my daughter as a toddler running through the grass on those strong legs, chasing butterflies, exploring the world, and laughing aloud at the sheer joy of being alive.

I took her perfectly formed hands in mine and inspected each individual finger, memorizing their color and noting the shape and contour of her almost-translucent fingernails, thinking about the tips of her pre-teen hands decorated in brightly colored nail varnish that would surely make her feel so grown up.

Lifting her warm body from my lap, I cradled her to my chest and studied her exquisitely round, beautiful face that I had longed to see for months on end, wondering if she would look more like me or her father. Or if she would take on the best of us both instead. I was sure it would be the latter.

I traced my knuckles lightly over her cheeks, noting a few traits similar to my own in her soft features, ones that were meant to merge with those of my husband's and evolve into something distinctly her own as she grew. It was a face that was bound to light up any room she entered.

I pictured her as a teen dressed up for prom in sequined gowns whose beauty could never hope to rival the shine of her joyous smile. And I saw her on her father's arm on her wedding day, decked out in elegant white silk with her gorgeous green eyes sparkling from beneath a lace-trimmed veil.

Would they be green like mine? She hadn't opened them, but I was convinced they'd be green.

I used the most delicate of touches to trace the outline of her closed, slightly pursed lips while a montage of images flooded my head -- her first tooth, braces, her first words uttered on a trilled timbre, followed by a tinkling laughter that I knew was inside her, aching to be set free.

There were first days of school, first dates, graduations, her first job. Endless milestones that were rightfully hers.

And one that rightfully should have been mine alone.

A sharp, stabbing pain burned through my heart when I thought of those four little words I had waited a literal lifetime to hear.

"I love you, Mommy!"

My breath caught in my throat, choking off a strangled sob as I curved my body protectively over my precious baby girl. When I was able, I whispered softly in her ear a combination of the words she would never, ever say back to me.

"Mommy loves you so much, sweet Kyra Jane. More than my own life."

A hot tear dripped onto her cooling cheek when I pressed my lips to hers in our very first -- and last -- kiss.

It took two anxious nurses to unwind her stillborn body from my arms and a guttural wail erupted from the depth of my soul as I watched them carry my baby girl away forever.

No, nothing in my wildest imagination could have prepared me for a day like today.